False Hopes
by healed
Summary: "Alex is just short of five years old the first time they shuffle into the new apartment." Little scribblings about Alex's childhood. Oneshot.


**Despite the fact I wanted to, I've never really given serious consideration to writing childhood Alex (or Piper), because alanabloom's Young Blood series covers that so well, anything I try is always going to be consistently inadequate in comparison. But several ramblings with TheSickenerHits (who I'd like to credit as inspiration for this) really got me thinking. And here we are.**

….

Alex is just short of five years old the first time they shuffle into the new apartment. But this one is different for one very important reason – Diane has promised this one's _for keeps_. Alex has her jacket zipped all the way up, but that doesn't compensate for the way the wind whips through the holes around the elbows.

The apartment is much bigger than the last one, and that fills Alex with an anxiety that seems to thread itself into the air – a bigger apartment means it's going to cost more. That means longer hours occupying herself with coloured pencils in the booths, more of watching that twisted grimace set itself on Diane's face every time she walks past, knowing Alex is only pretending to look content.

Diane gives Alex's shoulder a squeeze. "You like it?"

It's a double-edged sword, really. On one hand, of course she likes it. It's better than auntie's couch - Alex _hates_ it when they end up there - and it's sure as hell a step up from those emergency housing shelters. But the bigger the space, the more it costs, and there's less chance that the promise _this is for keeps_ can actually be kept. Alex bites down the urge to ask if they can go back to the rental lady and take it all back. Find somewhere smaller, _cheaper. _Somewhere that actually has half a chance of staying permanent.

"It's…_big_. Nice."

"More room for you to go nuts in, baby." Diane puts the keys down on the hallstand, bending down until she's eye-level with Alex. She's got this pained look in her eye, helpless even. Alex reflexively swallows hard. That's the _bad news_ look. "I know you don't believe me. But we're gonna to stay here. For years and years and years." Diane wipes a speck of dust off Alex's nose, adjusting black hair away from her eyes. "Don't you worry 'bout it."

Alex moves behind Diane from room to room, peeking between her jeans to see into the rooms. There's so many of them – Alex isn't used to having more than a bedroom, bathroom and a kitchen to keep track of – she's instantly afraid of getting lost.

There's stairs, too. Alex counts them as she climbs up to the bedrooms. Diane opens the first door on the right, swinging it all the way open. Apart from a black metal-framed bed pushed against the far wall, there's nothing in there. "This one's yours. _Just_ yours."

Alex looks up. "You mean you're gonna be somewhere else?"

"That's the beauty of this place, babe. No more putting up with me stealing the covers."

It strikes Alex as odd, because her mother _doesn't_ steal the covers. She never does. Half the time Diane deliberately pulls them off and tucks them around Alex instead, so the blankets don't have to strain so much.

Alex cracks a smile, and tries to hold it as long as possible, just to please Diane. But the truth is, she doesn't really want her own room.

Alex helps with boxes, fingers struggling to reach the sides as she carries them through the threshold and takes them to whatever room they've been labelled as. Diane carries the heavier ones, rushing to remove one of them from Alex's grasp when she stumbles a little under the weight of it. By early afternoon, all the boxes are cluttered together in various rooms.

There's no food in the house, and Alex is growing hungry, but she doesn't dare comment on it. Diane finishes switching on all the appliances, and checks the phone for a dial tone. Alex watches a conflicted look wear itself onto her features. That's the problem with moving somewhere new. There's nobody she knows, much less trusts, to look after Alex for when she's got to leave.

"Okay, I'm gonna go hand in some resumes and get some food. Will you be alright?"

Alex nods solidly. Diane hovers for a moment, torn between leaving and staying. "You know the drill? Keep the door locked, don't answer it for anybody, but you can answer the phone. If it's someone you don't know, hang up right away, okay?"

"Got it."

They fiddle with the lock, testing it a few times to make sure it's not defective. But eventually, Diane knows she can't stall any more. "I'll be back in about two hours. Don't burn the place down."

Alex grins, shrugging her shoulders in a _I'll do my best_ kind of way. Diane smiles, pulling Alex in close by the skin of her jacket. "Love you."

Alex scrunches up her nose, but doesn't pull away as Diane gives her a kiss on the cheek, before raising her thumb to wipe the lipstick away. "Yeah," Alex mumbles. "I know."

Alex spends a good couple of hours going through the house – slower this time. She traces the splintered doorframes, and experiments with flicking on and off the lights. She makes her way upstairs, opening the door that leads to what is apparently _her_ room. There's a couple of boxes Diane has left in there, and Alex sits down beside them, tearing off the lids and putting them to the side. Her clothes fill one – most sporting at least one patch her mother has sewn back on with mismatched material and fraying cotton. Alex doesn't mind it much. But sometimes, just _sometimes_, she catches looks from kids at the mall, older ones, that all turn heads at the same time, before they reform their tight circle and whisper things. Occasionally, she hears _poor_ and _rags_ snickered as she moves past them.

And it's through those double glances and secretive gossip that Alex learns there's something distinctly _different_ that marks her apart from the rest.

….

Alex is kicking her feet against the underside of the booth seat when a boy clambers in to the seat opposite her. Alex looks up, closely scrutinising the boy with this hard-set look of intense concentration that doesn't let up. It's the first time someone's ever done that.

"You're her daughter, right?" He says, raising a stubby finger towards Diane at the other end of the diner.

"Yeah."

A sly smile develops at the corner of his mouth as he watches Diane move between the tables for a minute, eventually dragging his gaze back to Alex. It seems bad somehow, that's the only way Alex can describe. It feels _faked_ and _wrong_ and about to get _so much worse._

"How old are you?" He ventures again, but the second Alex makes eye contact with him, he seems to grow intensely uncomfortable and starts to wriggle around in his seat. For some reason, Alex feels herself get defensive with all these interrogating questions. She boards her face up, pressing her glasses tighter to the bridge of her nose.

"What's it to you?"

"Because. If you're five, you'd be starting school. I wanted to know if you were."

Something releases, a tension that had been waiting for something worse. Alex decides the question is harmless, and answers. "I'm five."

"So-so…you're starting school? At Weston?"

"I guess."

That sly smile morphs into a grin, and there's something about his blue eyes that makes Alex feel like she's walking into a trap. But she can't quite pinpoint what it is.

He snickers, rubbing his hands together, as though in some convoluted way, he's just become victorious in a very important battle.

"Are you getting there by _dumptruck?"_

Alex's brow knots together, and something in her chest drops.

_Shatters. _

She doesn't say anything – she knows it's wiser not to. But it doesn't exactly stop the overwhelming urge to grab him by the scrap of his stupid pale blue t-shirt and push him onto the ground. _Hard._

But before Alex can even consider that possibility, absently wondering if pulling something like that might get her mom _fired_, he opens up his mouth again, and before Alex can catch up, he's midway through his next sentence.

"That's where you live, right? The junkyard? With no dad?"

Alex gives him one last look before turning back down to the half filled-in colouring page. She makes her hand move, even if it's just to give the impression she's busy. Not paying attention to his foul little mouth.

"I have a dad." Alex says softly.

Alex is so consumed with the task of blocking everything but the colouring book out, she doesn't see her mom approaching with two plates resting on her forearm. The minute the boy catches sight of Diane hovering over the table, he scrambles to his feet and bolts back to the safety of his family's table.

Diane gives Alex a look. "Friend of yours?"

Alex shakes her head. "No. Just wanted something."

"Oh yeah?" Diane asks, sliding one plate towards Alex and checking her watch. "What'd he want?"

Alex considers telling, knowing that she would feel better if she shared it, and they could both take solace in the mutual agreement that he's a _total fuckin' prick_, and that _most boys are like that_.

But as much as it feels like a freight train that can't be stopped, she pushes it all back. Alex doesn't want that look of pity again, not now, not ever. She doesn't want Diane to know about the slow cluster of information that has started to gather. About _where she lives_ and _why her mom works at the diner, _and _how come she has holes in the back of her jacket_.

"About school. If I was going."

Diane nods, but something snags, and suddenly, she is able to tie Alex's newfound habit of dropping her head when she's not telling the whole story, in with how quickly that boy scrambled. Diane drops the subject and switches to a new one, _an easier one,_ but it takes a good two days before Alex finally seems to return to normal.

But there's something else Alex doesn't seem to let go of so easily. It steadily grows all through the next month, and there are times when Diane feels like it's a teenager, not a five year old, on her hands. It seems to coincide with whenever anything to do with _school_ is mentioned, and even when they are forced to drive past the oppressive building on Thursday nights for the Laundromat, Alex crosses her arms tight around her chest and stares blankly around the console.

Diane makes a point of finding a detour.

Eventually, it can't be avoided anymore, and the night before school starts, Diane watches Alex sit at the kitchen table, pretending to ignore the existence of dinner. Usually, Diane understands that Alex is best left alone when she gets like this. But some motherly instinct kicks in, and forces the words out her throat.

"Not gonna eat, babe?"

Alex shakes her head, dragging her fork around the circumference of the plate.

Diane waits a few more seconds for Alex to respond, but it's clear Alex doesn't have the slightest intention of doing so.

"Not talking either?"

Alex shifts nervously in her chair, wearing this look like she's about to say something really important. Right away, Diane gets anxious.

Alex slowly drops her fork. "I want to take the bus to school tomorrow." It's tightly-wound and filled with a determination that makes it seem like Alex has been wanting to say this for quite some time. But has only just now found the courage.

Still, it takes Diane unawares to get a question like that. And for a moment, she is more concerned with where it's coming from than what is actually means.

"Well, I have the morning off, so I can take you. Easy-peasy."

It doesn't coax Alex back; instead, having the opposite effect of making her more blockaded than ever. "Yeah, but _mom…"_

It's not the begging or pleading version of _mom _that Diane hears with every petulant child tugging on their mother's shoulder for dessert. It's the kind that scratches at some form of intuition, like Diane is _supposed_ to already know the problem, before Alex has even hinted at what it is.

"Al, you're five years old. Not _fifteen_, even though you act like one. You're not old enough for the bus." Diane fiddles with her cutlery, clambering for a more solid reason, because Alex can surely argue her way out of that one. "And besides, it's your _first day_."

Alex goes still.

"Please?"

If Alex was going to elaborate on what it was, _that_ would have been her cue. But clearly, Alex isn't going to budge. Diane wracks her brain for the answer, but comes up empty.

"Every other new kid in your grade will be dropped off. You're not going to be any different, if that's what you're worried about."

Her mouth opens in protest, and Diane waits expectantly for it to be hurled across the table. But Alex just mumbles something under her breath, choosing to stay silent for a while. She picks at the plate.

"How old do I have to be before you let me?"

Diane thinks it over, trying to think of what age would be sensible to let a child go unaccompanied to school, not too early, not too late.

"Ten."

Alex looks bothered by that response, and for a minute harbours this look that seems to carry an inward judgement about how that choice of age dictates _overprotectiveness_. Diane sees resentfulness flash in Alex's eyes, if only for a second, before it gets shuffled away, tugged inward to places no one can ever get to.

…

From the time in-between when Diane wakes Alex up and making it into the car, Diane catches onto Alex's little stalling tricks. The first comes around breakfast, when it takes a good fifteen minutes longer than usual for Alex to get her ass to the table. The second comes when Alex claims to have lost her bag, insisting that there is _no way_ they can leave without finding it. Strangely, it turns up wedged between the couch cushions, conveniently pushed out of sight. But Diane stays one step ahead of her, and eventually, Alex runs out of excuses.

Alex stays deathly silent the whole way there, arms crossed and hunched over like she might just disappear if she gets herself small enough. Suddenly, Diane feels an unshakeable trickling of guilt glide down the back of her throat. _Maybe this was a bad idea_…

Briefly, Diane considers what the harm would be by just driving straight onto the diner, propping Alex in the corner booth with pencils and colouring pads. Just the way it's always been. Just the way she's comfortable with. But she _has_ to go to school sometime, and missing the first day probably isn't the best way to start. Diane tightens her grip on the wheel, and tries to fight the saturation threatening to spill from her eyes. She slows to a stop just five metres from the gate.

"You got your bag?"

"Yeah."

"Money?"

"Yeah."

"Everythin' you need?"

"Yeah."

Diane pauses, watching as Alex keeps her head down, in that characteristically avoidant way. The atmosphere seems to flip, and all of a sudden, _both_ of them feel on the verge of tears.

So Alex mumbles "Bye" without looking up, and jumps out of the car. The words _love you, kiddo_ die on Diane's lips. She watches Alex walk in, her steps swift and determined, _just like she is_, with her bag looking all to big as she fights to keep it on her shoulders. She's gone without a single look back.

….

Diane worries all damn day about how Alex is doing. She knew there was sure to be separation anxiety; after all, Alex hardly left her side for five whole years. But now she's on her own, she's _independent_, but deep down Diane knows Alex isn't really ready for that yet.

Her glances at the clock grow more frequent, and so too do the thoughts of what Alex might be doing right now – what class it is, whether it's boring, if the kids are all right. If she found someone to tag along with to get through the day.

She stuffs up several orders and ends up putting the wrong name badge on for her second shift of the day, and she's feeling around for her keys by the time 3pm closes in. She drives faster than she should – after all, there are several unpaid parking tickets registered to this old bomb of a car. But it doesn't matter. She just wants to know if Alex is okay.

Relief floods over her when the door opens and Alex climbs in, dropping her schoolbag between her feet. Diane sucks in a deep breath, and tries to decipher that awfully concentrated look on Alex's face.

"How was school?"

Alex fights to stay passive, but her features grow tighter as they twist, painfully kept in check as she holds out for as long as possible. Immediately, Diane knows the answer is not going to be good.

….

**This is a oneshot, but there's potential for more, I guess. I'll say upfront, though, I don't think this is something worthy of continuing. But if you're a fan of childhood Alex and stuff, go read alanabloom's Young Blood series (it's the best writing in the fandom). It's so much better than anything I'm ever going to write.**


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